"My best friend's name was Johnny Capshire. He was always a normal enough fella, until Dec 13, 1986. That's when he lost his mind.

Johnny went missing that day. It took a day or two for all of us (his friends and family) to realize he was gone, and contact the authorities.

As the law seemed determined to take its own sweet time getting around to doing anything on the matter, me and others initiated our own search efforts.

Both we and the law came up empty.

Addled

Almost exactly three weeks after he'd disappeared, Johnny was back. Or at least part of him was.

He no longer answered to his given name. Acted like 'Johnny Capshire' was a different person entirely.

Johnny now claimed he was God, visiting Earth after a long trip away. Told us he'd returned because he figured it was now time to check on how things were doing in this patch of his cosmic garden.

Well, let me clarify here: he didn't use the name "God": or many of those other exact words; but it all seemed to be implied from the nonsense he was spouting.

It took us a while, but we finally became convinced Johnny wasn't joking.

We took Johnny to the hospital, but they could find nothing physically amiss with him. They referred us to a mental health specialist. Johnny ended up being institutionalized for a few weeks.

We only learned by accident that Johnny had talked his way out of the place after that-- for some reason the staff didn't notify any of us about it. One of us (Johnny's sister) found out when she went to see him for a visit.

So Johnny went missing for a second time, and we all went looking for him again. This time the law didn't even make a pretense about helping.

Missing marbles

I finally found Johnny myself, at our favorite fishing hole, a few days later. He was just sitting on the bank, gazing out over the water.

I decided to sit down next to him. I didn't immediately say anything to him, because I was afraid he'd still act like he wasn't himself.

Johnny didn't acknowledge my presence at all for a few minutes. Then he finally spoke.

"You shouldn't worry about me, you know," Johnny told me.

"I can't help it Johnny. You're-- um-- you're acting kind of strange. You know?"

"I know. But you are too. You know?"

"No. What do you mean?"

"You-- everyone-- aren't acting like I expected you to."

"Well, we did what we thought best, after you went missing, and showed up again--"

Johnny interrupted me. "No, I don't mean that. I mean in general. With the planet. With your neighbors. You're-- well-- backward, Charley."

"Eh? I don't think I'm getting what you're talking about, Johnny."

"Well-- it's like this. There's currently twenty-two other worlds similar to Earth in age and condition sharing more or less this same orbital range from the galactic core. The peoples of all those worlds are already actively working their home systems: the other planets, their cometary clouds, their asteroids, and more. But here, you're not even close to that. Apparently, you're still a couple thousand years behind the others in such matters. The question is, what's wrong with you?"

I wasn't sure what to say to that: it made little sense to me. So I ignored it.

"Johnny, why don't we go to my house and get something to eat? I'm sure you're hungry."

Johnny ignored me back. And seemed to talk to himself. Something about how our problem couldn't be a lack of resources, or an unusually high number of cosmic or geological calamities. He seemed to settle upon something called cultural dead ends as the culprit.

Me, I stood up and left at that, to get to somewhere I could call from to spread the word I'd found Johnny, and where he was and what he was doing.

I figured we could either keep a collective eye on him for a while until he got better, or else manhandle him into a car and take him home and chain him up for a while-- for his own protection. And get more help for him.

Luckily, Johnny didn't offer much resistance to our efforts, and come that Sunday we actually managed to take him to church with us.

Johnny acted confused: like he couldn't remember what church was, or its purpose. We patiently tried to explain it to him. After a while he suddenly burst out laughing, making us angry: Johnny acted like he thought the whole idea of church and religion was some sort of grand joke or prank.

When Johnny recognized our anger and hurt, he changed his tune quick, and apologized. It was around that time we arrived at the church and went in.

Johnny acted perfectly civilized at church, and seemed to pay gratifyingly close attention to the service.

A cracked pot

Afterwards in the car Johnny asked more of his odd questions. Like how many people did we think attended one sort of church or another worldwide. Stuff like that. He also asked our opinions about various things, like what we and the church thought about science and technology, and more. We answered as best we could.

After dark that evening, I found Johnny again sitting by himself, this time in my backyard, in a folding chair. Most everyone else was leaving, as it was getting late. Johnny was to stay with me that night (we were all now taking turns watching over him).

I pulled up another chair and sat down next to him. Johnny was staring up at the night sky.

Without turning to look at me, Johnny said quietly "I know what the problem is now."

"What problem?" I asked, having forgotten our not-quite-a-conversation on the river bank.

"Why you're not in space. Why many of you still live in mud huts, and die of malnutrition and easy to cure illnesses."

"Oh! So now you have the cures for poverty and cancer, do you?" I smiled.

"No: I have the cause. Remove the cause, and the cures come virtually automatically."

"Well-- I guess so," I replied non-committedly.

"Now I know what the difference is between you and the others. The only difference which matters: religion. There's nothing like it on the other worlds: sure, you can find traces in many of their history books-- but once a race's scientific revolution takes off, that usually rids them of religion.

"Here though, for some reason, you've purposely kept quality educations from the masses, which has allowed religion to flourish here like nowhere else. That's what's holding you back!"

I didn't take kindly to Johnny disparaging religion: but as they say, the good Lord looks after fools and drunks; and Johnny had been a fool now ever since he lost his mind. So I held my tongue, and wondered how long it'd be before Johnny got well again...."

-- Touched in the head